


Best ideas of hawks and spiders

by Nival_Vixen



Series: Prompts 2020 [4]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Awesome Clint Barton, Awesome Maria Hill, BAMF Maria Hill, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Be Nice to Clint Barton, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Clint Barton's Bow & Arrows, Clint would like it to be known that this was not his fault, Coffee, Complete, Deaf Clint Barton, F/F, Lesbian Maria Hill, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Prompt Fic, SHIELD, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes, SHIELD Agent Clint Barton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-27
Updated: 2020-12-27
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28367715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nival_Vixen/pseuds/Nival_Vixen
Summary: Maybe training the new SHIELD agents in the middle of the common area wasn't a good idea.Training them with exploding arrows definitely wasn't Clint's greatest idea.Ah well, explosions happen all the time.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Clint Barton, Maria Hill/Natasha Romanov
Series: Prompts 2020 [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1921621
Comments: 2
Kudos: 58





	Best ideas of hawks and spiders

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Samari1](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samari1/gifts).



> Prompt: Clint may or may not have taken the opportunity to teach a group of fresh and shiny SHIELD agents a few things that Deputy Director Hill was not happy about. Not being a moron, he needed to escape. She could find him tomorrow or next week. Or never. Yeah, never sounded good. So, he took to the vents. Problem. Hill knows his tricks. He barely manages to get back out before she locks the vent covers down. Ends up in a room. With James. Hill is no moron, she locked the doors too. He’s stuck. With a hot guy. A hot guy who ignores him, fuck his life.  
> James isn’t ignoring him because he hates him.  
> Beyond that, have a blast. If there is some sort of bet between Hill and Nat about the two men finally stopping the idiocy, bonus points!

"All right, now when you've got your target in your sights, press this button and let go. It's on a timer, so be quick about it, but don't rush," Clint warned.

"What? Sir, that doesn't make any sense," the agent-in-training said in alarm, eyes widening.

"Sure it does! Breathe, press the button, and then let go so you don't lose your hand with the explosion."

" _Explosion?_ I thought these were _training arrows!_ "

"They are! They're training _exploding_ arrows. You should probably let go now," Clint added, glancing to his wrist.

He wasn't wearing a watch, but the agent hurried to let go all the same. The arrow went flying, ignoring the target like it was its mission in life, and then kept on going. It exploded in mid-air, several of the agents screaming in surprise and alarm.

Clint gave a low whistle and slapped the agent on their shoulder. "Wow, you've got a good draw. You should look at changing the taut - "

"Agent Barton!"

_Oh, no_ .

"Director Deputy Hill! Lovely to see you and... oh wow, that's a lot of coffee on your very white outfit. Run, guys, run!" Clint said, dodging around several of the agents to run from the room like aliens were on his tail.

"Barton! Get your ass back here!"

Clint pretended he didn't have his hearing aids on, running even faster. He ran into a dead end - _on purpose, thank you very much, though why did they even have dead-end hallways in a building anyway_ ? - and scaled the wall, hanging onto the ceiling vent for a moment. He used one hand to tug the vent cover free so he could climb inside. His super hidden hiding spot meant he wouldn't be found for a while, and maybe, just maybe, it would be long enough for Hill to forgive him. Or at the very least get annoyed by someone else who wasn't him.

Clint replaced the vent behind him and started to make his way through the vent to get to the next room over. _There was no point in staying where he was and being found that much sooner, even if it was the best hiding spot, ever_ . _Okay, it was also because this vent was smaller than the one it connected to, and he needed more room for his... well,_ **_everything_ ** _to not feel like tiny and squished sardines in a tin_ .

By the time he made it to the next vent section, Clint couldn't help but congratulate himself on his brilliant idea. He tried not to focus on the fact that the new agents might never forgive him for leaving them to Deputy Director Hill's wrath after he'd been the one to convince them to try the bows and arrows from SHIELD's weapons room.

_Maybe he could really throw them under the bus and tell Hill they'd begged for a demonstration from Hawkeye? Hmm, probably not a good idea to thoroughly piss off nearly twenty brand new agents, especially when they still had the energy and bloodlust that older agents had lost over time. Well, other older agents. Not him. Even though he needed coffee for energy, that's not the point. He had a point, he was sure of it_ .

"Barton, we had cameras installed inside the vents. Meaning I know exactly where you are," Hill's voice echoed through the vent around him and Clint looked around, frowning at a tiny button-sized camera in the top corner. "You break it, you buy it, Barton."

_Aww, money, no_ .

Reaching back, he opened one of the pockets in his tac pants and pulled out a fistful of bandaids. Unsticking the protective layer, he carefully covered the tiny camera with the neon purple bandaid.

_Much better_ .

He continued crawling through the vents, covering up cameras that he saw along the way. Feinting a direction by covering extra cameras only worked to a certain point, but he managed for a metre or two before doubling back to his original route.

"Covering the cameras won't work either, Barton. The vents have pressure sensors installed, too," Hill said, as though she was advertising them, and her voice came from a speaker that was far closer than Clint would have liked for all of his hard work.

Thinking of the building as a map in his mind, Clint overlaid the vents on top of it. _If Hill was in the security room here, and he was in the vent there, then that meant he could get to that room and there would be several walls between them..._ _Hmm, it was risky, but he could do it if he could lock the room before Hill made it to the door. If he remembered correctly, that room didn't have windows either, so she wouldn't be able to see him. Once he covered up the camera with his emergency stash of bandaids, that is. It was doable, he just needed to move faster than the cameras and pressure sensors, which was... less doable_.

Grinning at the new challenge, Clint raised his body into a plank, only his fingertips and the curve of his boots pressed against the vents.

"Barton? What are you doing?"

Clint concentrated and didn't answer. He lifted one hand carefully and turned off his hearing aids, just as he heard Hill starting to swear. He doubted that she could have taught him any new swear words since that had to be one of the best bonuses of being BFFs with a badass former Russian assassin spy: you learnt all the swear words in multiple languages. His favourite one involved someone's mother and a toad-licking goat. _Or was it a goat-licking toad? Either way, it was brutal._

Reminding himself to concentrate, Clint focused on his task, inhaled and exhaled like he was lining up a shot, and then bolted for the vent he needed to escape into that room. _Okay, 'bolted' was probably far too generous a description for the movements he made. Crawl-waddled like a trapped duck was more apt, but that's not the point_ . The point was he made it to the vent, kicked it out, dropped into the room, and locked the door in under ten seconds flat.

Clint held his arms up like a gymnast and gave a bow to his imaginary audience, all of whom were cheering for his win against his opponent, and he turned to the other side of the audience to bow again. Their applause deafened - pun intended - and Clint yelped, jumping in surprise when he realised something very important.

He wasn't alone in the room.

...

James heard a commotion and not-so-distant explosion and figured he'd be better off hiding until the actual person responsible for said commotion and explosion was found. It had to be just his luck that the day he finally agreed to go on a tour of a SHIELD facility that there was a goddamn explosion. While Steve and his tour guide ran ahead towards the explosion, James was stuck in flight or fight mode instead.

He didn't know if he wanted to protest his innocence immediately or if that would make him look guilty. Hiding probably wouldn't help, but it had to be better than heading towards something that had exploded and then being blamed for said explosion. It was standard protocol when not on a kill mission: gather intelligence until he could determine whether an event could be used in his favour. Not that he was the Winter Soldier anymore, of course. He wasn't thinking like that killer, he was safe and sane and... _uh, consensual? Wait, that's not right._

His feet moved of their own accord and James was vaguely aware that he had moved into a smaller space, the door closed behind him firmly, and the distant fire alarm had stopped. He didn't pay too much attention to the fact, still trying to calm his racing heart and stop his hands from trembling, trying to get some semblance of control before Steve found him and made that face when he's trying not to show how pitiful he thinks James is now. _He was a goddamn killer - one of the best in the world! - who had control over... well, nothing, really._

It might be the Winter Soldier inside his head that was the one pitying him instead of Steve in real life, but at least James could feel things, which was better than that iced robot controlled by stupid words and idiots. His heart was still racing and his hands were shaking but that had to be a better response than cold indifference. As soon as James convinced himself of that, he'd feel better.

In fact, maybe he'd feel better if he went and killed those idiots for controlling him in the first place. Honestly, the thought was an attractive one, far more attractive than he'd admit to in the presence of others - especially Steve with his patented Look of Disapproval - but the whole 'controlled by stupid words' part stops him every time he thinks of it. _The idiots know the stupid words and he doesn't. The Winter Soldier might know them but he's not sharing. Greedy little fuck_ .

James was in the middle of this whole back and forth thing with himself when the cover from the air vent overhead went flying. James turned in time to see someone far too graceful with a body that tall drop into the room, lock the door, and strike a Y pose like he'd just completed a successful gymnast landing off the bars. He even gave a bow and turned, where he then yelped in fear on seeing James.

The guy was cute but obviously terrified of him. He'd even dressed nicely for the tour, so that was kind of a kick to the guts. _Maybe his hair had fallen out of its bun when he'd gone running for the closest small space to hide? Was his hair a turn off to cute guys?_

...

"Uh. Sorry. Didn't realise this hiding space was occupied. You need time alone?" Clint offered, already turning to unlock the door.

The door wouldn't open. Clint frowned and checked that he'd unlocked the door. The latch was showing as green, so it should be unlocked. Trying the handle again, Clint gave the door a small shove in case he'd managed to jam it with his super impressive locking speed when he'd landed in the room. The door didn't budge.

"Uh... Well, shit. Looks like the door's stuck. How do you feel about smaller spaces?" Clint asked, looking up at the vent and trying to determine if the guy could get into it successfully.

_Maybe if Clint gave him a boost up, he'd be okay?_

Clint looked over when he didn't get a response, and frowned when he saw the guy frowning back at him. _What was this guy's problem? He was acting like it was weird for people to drop into tiny rooms out of air vents or something_ .

The guy's mouth moved and Clint realised he had turned his hearing aids off. It had been a smart move at the time, but not so much now. Turning the switches on he scrunched his nose up at the sudden and overwhelming sounds. Hill had started to berate him over the building's PA system now, rather than sticking to the vents.

" - regret this, Barton. Starting tomorrow, you're going for mandatory psych sessions. If you don't show up, you don't get paid!"

Clint figured that was fair but he refused to admit it to Hill for _so many reasons_ .

"Uh... In case it wasn't obvious, I'm Barton. Clint Barton," he added. "Whatever you think I did - or whatever Deputy Director Hill said I did - it's not true. There was an exploding arrow and a very black coffee on a very white outfit. Only one of those things was my fault and I only gave the arrow to an agent to shoot, so I didn't really have anything to do with it! I'm completely innocent," Clint said, holding out a hand to shake.

The guy looked at him like he would believe a sewer-dwelling clown before he believed the words coming out of his mouth, and ignored the offered hand. Clint very and absolutely smoothly kept his hand going to run through his hair instead, just like he'd meant to do that whole time.

The guy raised an eyebrow, very and absolutely unimpressed, and turned away from him. "I'll stay over here, you stay over there until they break the door down. Deal?"

"They're not breaking the door down. It's locked from the outside. Or the inside, possibly both? We'll be the ones breaking the door down. Unless you can fit in a vent. Can I measure your... surprisingly broad shoulders? I want to see if I can get you up there before Hill finds me and takes a pound of flesh to pay for the dry cleaning. Trust me, the exchange rate for flesh to fabric does _not_ work well on the flesh side."

Silence met his exceptionally funny joke and Clint pouted.

...

James had to bite his cheek just so he wouldn't laugh at the joke. He wanted to be seen as a semi-serious potential agent and if the Deputy Director was really after the cute guy, then he didn't want to get on her bad side. Steve said she could be somewhat cantankerous and if Steve was saying that, James had to wonder what the hell his friend had done to piss her off. Whatever it was, it seemed that Barton had added to it, and James sure as fuck didn't want to add even more.

"Bucky? Bucky, are you all right?" Steve's voice came over the speaker and James sighed.

"Ah, Cap's with you? I can get back up in the vent if you think he's going to break the door down? You'll have more time together and a... well, mostly private room, if you need it," Clint offered, glancing around the room and wincing at the sight of the broken vent on the floor.

James groaned. "We're not together like that!"

"Hey, I'm not judging. I just know Cap can get a little obsessive over people he knows or deems as friends, and... wait a sec, can you face me for a minute? You're Bucky Barnes? Ahhh, fuck."

James frowned as the tall blonde became short, sliding down the wall and burying his head in his hands. "What're you doing, Barton?" he asked, looking down at him.

"Cap's gonna blame me for this. _Bad, Hawkeye_ ."

James looked from Clint over to the speaker in the top corner of the room. "How'd you jump to that conclusion? I'm the one that came into the room; you weren't even in here then."

Clint shrugged, his shoulders moving up to his ears with the movement, and James sighed. Sometimes Steve could jump to conclusions - it's what often resulted in him being beaten up in alleys when they were kids - and it seemed like he hadn't outgrown that.

"So... Hawkeye, huh? What do you do? I haven't kept up with the news," James said, settling down against the wall across from Clint.

"Oh. Yeah. Bow and arrow as an Avenger, mainly, but I can handle other weapons, too."

James waited for more, but Clint seemed to be finished. "Bow and arrow, hey? Well, in that case, you must be fucking amazing."

"Huh? How'd you figure that?" Clint asked incredulously, his legs splaying as he tried to process how James had come to that conclusion.

James' mouth went dry at the sight and he forced himself to look up at the cute blonde's face instead of... _all of that_ . "I've seen the shit you guys have gone up against. For the most part, I was an unwilling participant in that as well - "

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Clint muttered, but waved for him to continue.

"Considering some of the weirder shit that's out there, the fact that you can fight against them with a bow and arrow, and not only survive to tell the tale but also be an agent at SHIELD tells me you've gotta be fucking amazing at it."

"Huh. Shit, I wish that'd been recorded. I need that pep talk some days. All right, a lot of days. There's a lot of scary shit out there and I'm just a guy with a bow and arrow, y'know? But, you're right. I am fucking amazing," Clint said with a broad grin.

"Want to go to the range and prove it? I reckon I can bust us out of here," James said, looking over to the door.

"It won't be necessary to damage the building, Sergeant Barnes. The door is unlocked. Barton, stick to training the agents in the training range rather than the common grounds, understood?" Hill's voice came through the speaker.

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am."

"And don't call me ma'am ever again."

"Yes, Deputy Director Hill," Clint said meekly.

James stood up and offered Clint his hand. Clint took it and was surprised at how easy it was for the shorter man to pull him to his feet. A small shudder of desire ran through him at the thought of being manhandled by him.

"So, Sergeant Barnes, I have two questions if you accept them. Wait, no, three. No, four!"

"Call me James. And depending on what they are, I'll answer," he said a little warily.

"Nothing classified. Well, I hope not at least. Question one: are you together with anyone _like that?_ Question two: how do you feel about ravishing tall blondes against hard surfaces? Question three: what are your thoughts on pizza? And fourth and final question: what are your feelings towards dogs who will eat everything in sight? I mean, that sight is limited considering he's only got one eye, but he makes it work and still eats everything anyway."

"Four, I like animals more than people, even ones that eat everything in sight. Three, pizza is delicious and I'd fight Steve for the last slice of pepperoni. One, not together with anyone... yet," he said, giving Clint such an obvious and heated once over that Clint shivered at his expression.

"What about two?" Clint asked, counting on his fingers to double check that he hadn't heard wrong.

"Depends on how you feel about being ravished against hard surfaces," James said with a predatory grin.

Clint grinned back at him and walked backwards into the wall himself. "Ready when you are, James."

"Never mind, the door's locked again," Hill said, the speaker turning off without either man truly caring.

...

"Told you they'd hit it off," Natasha said, smirking as she collected a dollar bill from Maria.

"The only reason I left him in there is because I trust you, Natasha. If this goes wrong - "

"Steve, shut up, and give me a dollar. A bet is a bet, Cap," Natasha said firmly, holding her hand out. "And if this goes wrong and it's James' fault, I'll kick your ass _and_ his for hurting Clint."

Steve fished a dollar out of his wallet and held it out. "So, we're giving the shovel talk to each other instead of Bucky and Clint?"

"Oh, don't worry, they'll get it, too. In fact, why don't you go on a date with your own pretty young thing and leave the shovel talking to me?" Nat suggested, patting his chest.

Steve's cheeks reddened and he left the security room at a power walking pace.

"Who's he dating? We haven't heard anything through SHIELD," Maria said curiously.

"I have no idea, but I'll bet you a dollar they're brunette," Nat said with a grin, waving her newly claimed dollar bills.

Maria rolled her eyes. "Fine, I'll go blonde. And you owe me dry cleaning. This _was_ a brand new outfit."

Nat grinned broadly and tugged Maria close. "Best to take it off then, don't you think?" she murmured against her lips.

"Best idea you've had today," Maria agreed, kissing her deeply and pressing another set of buttons to lock the security room door.

...

  
The end.

Thanks for reading; I hope you liked it!


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